1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to online (e.g., Internet) advertising, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for an advertising system “returning” a content-served ad resource of a target document(s) when the advertising system determines that one or more ads should not be served using the resource.
2. Background of the Invention
Interactive media, such as the Internet, has the potential for effective targeting of advertisements (or “ads”) relative to traditional media, such as radio, television, print publications, etc. For example, some websites provide an information search functionality that is based on query keywords entered by the user seeking information. This user query can be used as an indicator of the type of information of interest to the user. By comparing the user query to a list of keywords specified by an advertiser, it is possible to provide some form of targeted advertisements to these search service users. For example, if a user enters the query term “sport utility vehicle,” the result page (which typically displays links to web documents determined to be relevant to the user's query) may display advertisers' ads associated with this query term (e.g., sport utility vehicle manufacturer ads, auto dealer ads, service and repair ads, etc.). An example of such a system is the ADWORDS® advertising system offered by Google, Inc.
While systems such as the ADWORDS® advertising system have provided advertisers the ability to better target ads to user interest, their effectiveness is limited to sites where a user enters a search query to indicate their topic of interest. However, the majority of web pages do not offer search functionality and for these pages it may be more difficult for advertisers to target their ads. As a result, the (non-targeted) ads on non-search pages may be of little value to the viewer of the page and thus may be viewed more as an annoyance than a source of useful information. Not surprisingly, these ads typically provide the advertiser with a lower return on investment than search-based ads, which are more targeted.
Recently, ad systems have been developed which can provide targeted ads on web documents, irrespective of whether such documents provide search capability or the user enters a query to access the document. For example, such ad systems include “content ad” systems that may dynamically analyze the content of a target document (which does not necessarily include search functionality) to determine whether any ads provided by one or more advertisers to the ad system are relevant to the content of the target document. If so, such an ad system may provide one or more ads to be served via a resource (e.g., page/display space, audio resource, etc.) of the target document to an end user (also referred to as an “advertising target”). An example of a content ad system is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/375,900, entitled “Serving Advertisements Based on Content,” filed Feb. 26, 2003 which is assigned to the assignee of the present application and is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety herein.
Typically, online advertising systems collect payment from advertisers based on one or more factors, such as the amount an advertiser is willing to pay for a specific placement of its ad relative to other ads or content, the key words with which the advertiser wishes its ads to be associated, the amount or frequency with which its ads are output by the advertising system (sometimes referred to as the “impressions” of the ad), the number of times its ads are selected by advertising targets (i.e., the users to whom the ads are displayed or otherwise output by the vis-à-vis the advertising system), or some factor(s) typically relating to the performance (e.g., impressions, clickthrough, etc.) of the ad.
In a content ad system, payment may, but does not necessarily, also flow from the content ad system to a publisher of the target document. A publisher, as used herein, is defined broadly to any entity (e.g., author/owner) or mechanism (e.g., a browser) that directly or indirectly can make a target document available (e.g., displayed or otherwise output via a browser) to a user. For example, the content ad system may share revenue with the publisher based on the performance of ads the content ad system provides via a resource of the target document. Alternatively or in addition, the content ad system may pay the publisher a flat fee for rendering one or more ads via the target web document. A commercially available example of a content ad system is the ADSENSE® advertising system and service offered by Google, Inc.
In some situations, it may be advantageous for a content ad system not to provide advertisers' ads in conjunction with a target web document. For example, the web document may be unavailable to the content ad system to enable it to match/target relevant ads to the content of the web document. On the other hand, providing an ad would be inappropriate if the target document contains content that is “sensitive” or “negative” (e.g., if the content relates to a tragic news story, pornography, alcohol or tobacco, gambling, guns, etc.).
In such situations, prior content ad systems typically may provide untargeted ads, inappropriate ads (e.g., a gun ad in conjunction with a tragic story about someone being killed by a gun) or provide “charitable” or “house” ads to the publisher. Unfortunately, these options may diminish ad performance (thereby decreasing net revenue or even creating net monetary loss for the content ad system and/or the publisher) or may lower user experience on the target web document (e.g., if irrelevant or inappropriate ads are provided) or both. In the latter instance, a user may become desensitized to, or even annoyed by, irrelevant or offensive ads.
Thus, what is desirable is a method and system for overcoming the above-described limitation(s) associated with prior ad systems.